Online Privacy, Robot Apocalypses, and More

Intellectual Production #5

In Kishonna Gray’s (2016) article, Solidarity is for White Women in Gaming, she argues that black women are often marginalized in feminist communities. To illustrate this phenomenon, Gray analyzes a discussion on a GamerGate forum on Xbox Live between women of colour and white women. Using snapshots of text from the discussion, Gray demonstrates how black women tried to create a discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement in relation to GamerGate, but were met with resistance from the white women, who saw racism and sexism as separate issues.

According to Gray, this discussion on Xbox Live is indicative of the larger problem of intersectionality within the feminist community. In other words, there is a struggle amongst feminists to understand how larger systems of oppression, such as racism, sexism, ableism, etc., are interconnected. This disconnect between users and players and intersectional approaches is exemplified in Gray’s analysis. For example, one of the (white) users in Gray’s analysis argued that “…But we are addressing your needs too. We’re talking about helping all women here,” to which a black Xbox live user commented “But you’re not. When you fix the whole gender issue, I still have to deal with racism.” In this way, the way we view these interactions needs to be through an intersectional framework so that we can understand how racism and sexism are linked.

Ultimately, this article is about the need for developing intersectional approaches in feminist theory in order to understand how different systems of oppression affect people in unique ways. In the specific case of Gray’s article, she advocates for creating better communication tactics between black and white feminists.